It’s a funny story in some ways, because they escaped from the daily grind for 16 years, and yet were committed to each other for all that time.

Some might say it’s more of a test of a relationship than living together in a two up-two down because there really was nowhere to go.

Others might think it’s a miracle that they haven’t returned home to divorce – but the pair, with their stories of helping out indigenous Indonesians, panicking in the shadow of Somalian pirates and bartering bras for fruit and veg – seem stronger than ever before.

Clive and Jane took early retirement to live their dream – he worked in utilities, she was a hospital technician – so it’s true that they had earned their right to have the great adventure.

No kids, no job and no worries – suddenly the prospect of life on the ocean waves was a real one, and they took to it together.

The bewitching story gives us all pause, and invites us to think about what it is we really want.

My parents used to idly suggest they might retire to Europe in their camper van, heading up the autobahn in Germany, down the autovía in Spain.

I put it down to them never quite having left their hippy roots behind.

As it turned out, they retired to a seaside village in the far north of Scotland, but the theme remained the same: escape.

When we plan for the future, we tend to think about retirement – a time when we have no responsibilities, when our working duty has been done and we enjoy the freetime we’d long since forgotten it was possible for people to have.

And that’s exactly why Clive and Jane are heroes.

After sailing to Spain, the pair took their boat – the Jane G – to the Cape Verde islands and then across the Atlantic to Barbados before island-hopping through the Caribbean.

Following that it was a trip up the east coast of America, calling into New York, before north to Canada, down to the Panama Canal, crossing the Pacific to Australasia, then up through Indonesia to southeast Asia, over to India and through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean where they spent the last couple of years.

Clive - now 62 – and Jane - now 60 – must have the secret to happiness right in the palm of their hands.

To go for 16 years with no arguments – they’ve gladly revealed – and leaving behind the trappings of everyday that we all take for granted is a gift in itself.

Imagine waking up on the boat you spent the night in, those marine sounds echoing around you – the swish of the waves against the boat, the clinking of the ropes on the mast and then, if you’re lucky, the complete and utter silence of everything beyond.

The regiment of the commute to work, snatched lunch hours at your desk and flustered unpaid overtime crashing into your plans at the last minute is something we all cling to day in, day out, but the Greens have proven it doesn’t have to be real life.

Seductive both physically and intellectually, the patent escapism of their excellent adventure is almost of Daniel Defoe, a pair of modern day Robinson Crusoes who found themselves, not exactly cast asunder, but certainly unleashed from real life and permitted a time in paradise.

The happy couple of course had their boat, to continue exploring, and some money with which to feed themselves, but the isolation, the regression to basics and the innate freedom from everything that holds us firmly in our societal place is the most engaging idea for many of us feeling stuck in a rut.

“We went all the way around the world at an average speed of 4.5mph,” Clive said with a smile, and you have to envy him.

In fact, the only question at all on my lips is – why on earth would you choose to come back?

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